Scalper1 News
Spending on research and development is soaring at Apple ( AAPL ), Facebook ( FB ), Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google as they race against each other in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cloud computing, electric cars, drones, the Internet of Things and many other technologies. Apple’s R&D spending rose 30% in Q1 to $2.51 billion. In a regulatory filing, Apple said R&D, including stock compensation for engineers and other technical employees, was 5% of sales, up from 3.3% in the year-earlier period. By that yardstick, however, Apple lags Google by far, as well as Facebook. Facebook’s R&D spending has climbed to 13.4% of sales, up from 10% in 2014 and only 7% in 2010. In Q1, Facebook’s R&D spending rose 26% to $1.34 billion, with the company pushing into Internet drones, virtual reality and augmented reality. While virtual reality immerses a user in an imagined or replicated world (like video games), augmented reality overlays digital imagery onto the real world. Amazon and Google, though, are still the biggest spenders, according to a Bloomberg report . In Q1, R&D totaled 16.6% of Google revenue , Bloomberg said, up from 13.8% two years earlier. While Google aims to make gains in artificial intelligence , it’s trailing in software bots , an area where both Microsoft and Facebook made recent announcements. Google’s R&D spending will rise 16% in 2016 to $14.3 billion, BMO Capital Markets estimates. Then there’s Amazon. In Q1, Amazon’s R&D spending was up 28% to $3.53 billion, Bloomberg reported. At that growth rate, Amazon’s R&D spending will likely top Google’s this year. Scalper1 News
Scalper1 News